Accession: A collecting Booth for an AI Museum

Abstract

Accession is a collecting booth for an imaginary museum whose collection is described and organised by AI. Visitors submit everyday items to the booth where they are photographed and subjected to a number of AI processes which describe and classify the objects submitted. Through the exhibition the digital collection grows but as it does so the AI management becomes more and more selective about what is and is not accepted, rejecting new items that are a poor fit for the collection. Museum collections and AI classifiers rely on maintaining ho- mogeneity. A museum that collected anything would be a dumping ground with no identity, while AIs rely on training sets that have strong visual commonality. Both rely on a sense of sameness but both are subject to critical debates about diversity and representation. Accession explores this relationship by acting out a fictional but plausible scenario through commercially available AI technologies.